51 Times I Loved You
by Flare Warrior
Summary: For the 1sentence challenge on Livejournal, 50 sentences of McCoy/Khan with the background: Khan's on the Enterprise and not in the brig but also not trusted.


**#01 - Walking**

When Khan strides along with confidence and command, McCoy comforts himself with the certainty that anyone would stare.

 **#02 - Waltz**

He blames the aliens, space, Jim, and fate's terrible sense of humor when they switch partners it's Khan who takes his hand - and he blames the intensity of the dance that follows on the alcohol.

 **#03 - Wishes**

If wishes were horses they'd have more to do in their down time; wishes don't fill an empty stomach; wish in one hand blah blah blah and all the other things they tell you; McCoy wants things he can't have, but in the end his wish is that he didn't feel this way.

 **#04 - Wonder**

In space there's a lot to wonder about; but with Jim you never have to wonder long - and Khan, well, he counts as a wonder; McCoy supposes after a 47 hour shift spent cleaning up after his captain's most recent adventure.

 **#05 - Worry**

It's not that he doesn't trust Khan, because he never does; this time he's worried because Jim and his green-blooded first officer may be in more danger from the natives than the augment they're forced to work with, and Khan can't have a change of heart and save their asses if he's in trouble, too (or so he tells himself, but this may be the first time he's actually had to wonder if Khan will come back damaged beyond repair)

 **#06 - Whimsy**

It's a planet full of airheads and there's enough helium in the atmosphere to make fire a Bad Idea, but McCoy, having gone on the away team this time for no particular reason, finds himself having a grand old time listening to diplomacy happen in b flat (and okay, Khan is even more ridiculous to listen to than Spock because vaguely threatening and chipmunk just don't mix)

 **#07 - Waste/Wasteland**

It's not a wasteland, just a blank spot in space with only the silent crew to mark it as wrong, but Khan didn't know, and the doctor feels conflicted when he hears a hint of what sounds almost like grief when Khan says, cynically "What a waste"

 **#08 - Whiskey and rum**

"Here's what I've got left" McCoy tells his visitors "not that half of you can even appreciate it" he aims this at Spock and Khan, both having apparently decided to tag along with the Captain and Chief engineer (it was a long night)

 **#09 - War**

He has nightmares of the war (not that he cries out or speaks or moves in ways that show it, it's the subtle curl of his fingers into the blankets, the downward curve of his eyebrows, the thinning of his lips as he sleeps and the hard eyes and fingers that ghost over long-healed wounds when he wakes) not that it's any of McCoy's business - not that Khan would let him help.

 **#10 - Weddings**

McCoy can bitch all day about the trouble they get up to on the enterprise, but he'd go horse before he could ever voice all his very real concerns about the parties they attend -half the time they don't even know what they're celebrating- and this one, white lace and odd white drinks clashing with the gold skin and blue, blue eyes of their hosts, is no exception; he notes this as Jim and Spock are passed a ceremonial cup to drink whatthefuckever that he'll probably need to give them an antitoxin for, and then it's passed to him and Khan (and later he wonders what it meant less than he wonders why Khan was sitting next to him).

 **#11 - Birthday**

"Do people still make cakes?" Khan asks in an odd deviation from his usual menace-and-control routine; and as McCoy goes to quip at him Jim beats him to the punch "Of _course_ people still make cakes. They're _cakes_. Why does everyone ask about food?" while Jim shoots a look at Scotty, McCoy gives Khan a look of well-deserved wariness - after all, the doctor's birthday is just around the corner and there are no damn coincidences on the Enterprise.

 **#11.5**

The cake almost sets the ceiling on fire, what must be hundreds of candles mixing into one blazing inferno over a cake that is decidedly not big enough to hold all of them comfortably; and when they put it out and get the candles off and Jim stops laughing (finally) they see the inscriptions 'happy 330something birthday!' and 'not a day over 200!' written in frosting, Jim's renewed laughter masks McCoy's amused snort at Khan's very not-amused look.

 **#12 - Blessing**

Jim bolts at the first sign of McCoy's medical tricorder, Spock overworks himself and is the most inpatient patient this side of the mirror, Scotty had the nerve to run off with a dermal regenerator for when the engines burned his hands, and the rest of the crew only stick around and do as they're told out of something that McCoy would like to think is respect but is probably fear; except for Khan - he comes in when he's injured, sits quietly while McCoy examines him and actually LISTENS to his instructions to an extent, and that from the second most frequent resident of Sickbay, McCoy thinks, is a blessing and a half.

 **#13 - Bias**

The day he can't look at an issue objectively because he's got a bias towards siding with Khan is the day hell freezes over - but he's also in Starfleet, traversing deep space, so that day may have already come and gone.

 **#14 - Burning**

He wants to say it's the rum that makes him burn when he's pinned under that powerful gaze.

 **#15 - Breathing**

It's their first time off the ship in a while and they're standing on a cliff on the edge of forever, every color imaginable played out before them on ocean and sky; Khan, ever subtle, lets his eyelids drop and takes a breath of the wind that tastes of spring and sea and clean, and Leonard thinks 'to hell with propriety' and throws his arms wide and lets it all in.

 **#16 - Breaking**

Jim is on his table crashing, Khan is choking on his own blood, Spock is barely holding in his intestines, the other doctors are down and he has to chose between them-has to _choose_ \- between his best friend and the one person his best friend cares most about and _Khan_ and all one that name entails- but it's not a choice, it's regulation, and his hands work even as his heart shuts down; Kirk is fine thanks to him, Spock saves himself with a trance, and because he's a tough, augmented bastard Khan pulls through even though he shouldn't have (McCoy can't sleep for weeks).

 **#17 - Belief**

Temples are thick on the ground of the federation's newest ally, some strikingly grand and others just tiny buildings with shrines inside; and he stumbles across Khan praying quietly beside the smallest one yet, just a tiny covered shrine by the side of the road "I didn't take you for a man of-" he checks the shrine Khan had been facing, but gives up when he sees the unintelligible letters there "the religion of this planet we've been on for six hours" Khan looks relaxed in the dimming light of the orange sun "No, McCoy, but I can appreciate the religions of others."

 **#18 - Balloon**

He's standing at a crossroads of sorts formed by the halls of the enterprise, four directions to chose from and no idea where he's going or where he started, when something floats into the corner of his vision- tethered to a tiny enterprise figure on the floor is a balloon, dark and gently listing in one direction; the tether is fraying so he reaches out and clutches the breaking strands because he knows that if it snaps, that striking black balloon will float out of his reach.

 **#19 - Balcony**

Khan is standing majestically above him on a balcony, silhouetted by the sunlight, in a stance fitting of the ruler he once was "If you're done posing up there Khan, we've got work to do" McCoy calls, and Khan actually smirks at him.

 **#20 - Bane**

"The bane of the enterprise" the elder Spock had called him when pressed; McCoy can't disagree more - Khan is less the bane of the enterprise (he's been forced to help save it how many times now?) and more the bane of one Leonard H. McCoy, MD, sneaking in like a poison to his worn out soul.

 **#21 - Quiet**

'Quiet' is not a word one can use to describe Khan; his voice holds power and commands attention, his mere presence seems as loud as a shout in an elevator; however, 'quiet' is what you use to describe what's _around_ Khan, something that McCoy enjoys when Khan is his patient and the only thing he has to worry about is that velvet voice breaking into his thoughts.

 **#22 - Quirks**

Sometimes Khan gets into a conquering mood; and McCoy has developed increasingly stealthy ways to sedate him when one strikes.

 **#23 - Question**

"Are you with us?" the question is posed in the thick of a life-or-death situation, so everyone hears it just fine because that just means Tuesday afternoon, and the bridge goes quiet - Jim meant right now, but it touches on a question all of them, the ship's chief medical officer included (maybe especially), are starting to think they may not know the answer to.

 **#24 - Quarrel**

Jim and Spock are fighting, Leonard and Jim are fighting _, Chekov_ and _Sulu_ are fighting, but somehow it's Khan picking fights that tips McCoy off that they're even sick (and what does that say about their crew?)

 **#25 - Quitting**

The word 'quit' seemed to have been systematically eradicated from the collective vocabulary of the Enterprise's crew (which gave their chief medical officer no end of grief), and Khan, the crazy super-human bastard, was just another example of the anomaly.

 **#26 - Jump**

"Bones you have to jump!" Jim calls over the wind as McCoy hangs onto the ill-fated shuttle craft for dear life "NOW Bones, come on!" with a silent prayer he does - the shuttlecraft dislodges behind him and plummets back down to the planet - and it's not Jim or Sulu who catches him, but Khan who snatches him from the air and suddenly he's crushed to a solid chest on ground as solid as he's going to get.

 **#27 - Jester**

Khan had finally settled in, if his entirely relaxed posture in the empty observation deck was anything to go by; some old, lilting tune he must have exhumed from the archives sounding gently from the speakers around the room "So are you the jester or the king in this scenario?" McCoy asked, but Khan just leveled him with a dark smile and didn't answer.

 **#28 - Jousting**

"This is ridiculous! Jousting stopped being practiced years ago - what the hell are these aliens smoking?!" McCoy raged as he was suited up in armor "I believe they read the collective minds of the crew and selected what they deemed an appropriate sport for their purposes" Spock replied, to which McCoy responded "Who the fuck do we have who knows this much about jousti- God damn it Khan!"

 **#29 - Jewel**

'The Jewel of the Nile' is one of the few films that survived the third world war, and though McCoy isn't exactly enthusiastic about watching it on movie night, the facts that 1) Khan has seen it and 2) it actually gets him misty make it totally worth watching, repeatedly.

 **#30 - Just**

Khan stands over the Enterprise's most recent enemy like an avenging angel and says "you will get your just deserts" but whatever he had in mind is interrupted by the hiss of a hypo "sorry" McCoy says easily to the cowering man "Conquering mood"

 **#31 - Smirk**

McCoy could go on for hours or days about Khan's infuriating, condescending, know-it-all _smirk_ ; what he doesn't know is that Khan could also go on for a similar amount of time about any given aspect of him.

 **#32 - Sorrow**

Though the war had been started and won for all the right reasons, McCoy thinks while extremely drunk one night, Khan's people had been massacred at the end of it so thoroughly that only 90 something had survived; and McCoy can't even begin to imagine how the man can cope with that much sorrow in his past.

 **#33 - Stupidity**

It's rampant on the ship, an epidemic even, if anyone asks McCoy; just as he gets Jim stable Spock will inevitably do something vengeful (but oh, it's not vengeful, he's a Vulcan, it's logical) and land on his table, meanwhile Sulu brings back insanity-inducing plants and Khan - no one gets him even started on Khan, because he won't stop for days.

 **#34 - Serenade**

For the first time in a long time McCoy is completely at a loss, because he swears he's never heard better singing and it's coming from Khan.

 **#35 - Sarcasm**

"Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit" Khan says, all superiority, to which McCoy responds "With all due respect, _my liege_ , you can kiss my ass"

 **#36 - Sordid**

McCoy snaps a picture between cackles when the away team- consisting of Jim, Spock, Sulu and Khan - returns, caked in mud and swamp water; not because they're dirty but because somehow even Khan looks sheepish, which is just priceless.

 **#37 - Soliloquy**

McCoy gets overly frustrated one bland day with a few medical reports, and at some point Khan comes in and makes a point of not announcing himself- apparently content to be amused by McCoy's tirades, random babble and eventual griping about the crew, and because the universe hates him, Khan himself.

 **#38 - Sojourn**

The thunder of rain almost drowns out McCoy's thoughts as he lies beneath a thatch canopy on the jungle planet they're staying on; and he knows he fell asleep at some point because his head is pillowed on Khan's lap.

 **#39 - Share**

They're fighting over a _pudding cup_ , McCoy realizes after a few seconds of watching Jim and Khan swat at each other; so before it can escalate into any sort of epic intergalactic war (which it could, with those two) he slams his own down between them and grumbles "You know, I'm starting to get the impression that there isn't enough space in the universe for the both of you" - he hopes (way down deep where he can't see it enough to worry about it) that he's wrong.

 **#40 - Solitary**

Khan is confined to quarters and McCoy doesn't know why because no one will tell him, and it's killing him that it's killing him to think that Khan may have done something terrible.

 **#41 - Nowhere**

"Death is strange" Khan says to a crying ensign "It's strange to think that a person you knew so well isn't here - and that they're not just not here, they're nowhere" Khan rests a hand on the man's shoulder "that's why it's important to remember them not with tears or guilt, but with joy" McCoy stands to the side and wonders how a man so chalk full of rage at the deaths of his people could be so uplifting to another at a similar time, but a second later thinks those things may be two sides of the same coin.

 **#42 - Neutral**

Khan's not evil or good, Jim finally clarifies one night (and McCoy listens because Jim's the only person in the universe who can understand Khan), he's neutral, only taking sides when it suits him; or, "and here's where things get complicated" when the good of those he considers his friends is concerned.

 **#43 - Nuance**

Khan is subtle, McCoy finally realizes when he stops being subtle; trailing his fingers up McCoy's thigh during a first contact banquet.

 **#44 - Near**

They skirt a sun so close the hull turns red and Scotty has to go out and re-weld some of the plating; and when Khan finally unwraps himself from the protective shield he'd created around McCoy they find themselves in the year 1994.

 **#45 - Natural**

It's only natural, McCoy tells himself, to start to care for the people who you spend the most time with; and it's only natural for them to act more civil - these truths don't help him much when Khan gets him bent backwards over his desk, mouth attacking the Doctor's throat in the best possible way and hands sliding steadily lower.

 **#46 - Horizon**

They sit on the observation deck, watching the sun rise over the planet they're orbiting, and McCoy pours Khan a shot of Saurian Brandy so he can taste it when they kiss.

 **#47 - Valiant**

Never let it be said that the Enterprise crew wasn't comprised of a group of the most valiant mother fuckers in the universe, but it's a little much for McCoy's heart to see them all, Khan included, staring down about a hundred charging aliens with little to no phaser power left - of course, they all made it, and of course, Khan takes the first moment they're back on the ship to crash their lips together in front of _everyone_.

 **#48 - Virtuous**

McCoy's got a thousand pet peeves about Khan, but Khan has already found the quickest ways to have him singing the augment's praises.

 **#49 - Victory**

They won; it's a good day, McCoy tells himself but...there are ten bodies in his morgue and thirty more in Medbay, so he can't bring himself to enjoy the festivities as much as the others (and then Khan pulls him away and they just sit until McCoy can't keep his eyes open anymore).

 **#50 - Defeat**

"I lost" Khan says from his place, restrained and recovering in Medbay "...what purpose is there for me now?"  
"Welcome to normal life, your grace" McCoy says with no malice, and then he perches on the edge of the biobed and steals a kiss "I think you'll find in the end, it's much better."


End file.
